Cecil Charles Windsor Aldin was born in Slough, Berkshire on 28 April 1870. He was a boarder at Eastbourne College, then attended Solihull Grammar School. Aldin’s father was a keen amateur artist, so Cecil commenced drawing at a young age. He studied art in the studio of the painter Albert Moore and at the National Art Training School at South Kensington (later the Royal College of Art). He also studied animal painting at Frank Calderon’s School of Animal Painting at 54 Baker Street, London. His first drawing in print appeared in the Building News of 12 September 1890. He then bombarded the illustrated periodicals with illustrations and thereby commenced a long association with the Illustrated London News. He was commissioned by The Pall Mall Budget in 1894 to illustrate The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. At the invitation of the genre painter Walter Dendy Sadler, he stayed at Chiddingstone, where he made friends with Phil May, John Hassall and Lance Thackeray. With them and Dudley Hardy and Tom Browne, they founded the London Sketch Club. Aldin’s sporting art featured one of his lifelong passions, hunting. He became famous for his watercolours and prints showing foxhunting scenes in the English countryside, as well as his ability to portray the dogs, horses, and animals that were the protagonists of these scenes. The birth of Aldin’s son and daughter inspired his nursery pictures, which together with his large sets of the ‘Fallowfield Hunt’, ‘Bluemarket Races’, ‘Harefield Harriers’ and ‘Cottesbrook Hunt’ prints, brought him much popularity. That was enhanced by his ever-expanding book and magazine illustrative work. His book The Romance of the Road includes maps of various postal routes used during the Georgian Era, giving a history of each route, along with anecdotes. An exhibition of Aldin’s work in Paris in 1909 was acclaimed and extended his fame to a wider audience. He moved to Henley, as his interest in hunting, horses and dogs increased and in 1910 he became Master of the South Berkshire Hunt. He lived at ‘The Abbots’, Sulhamstead Abbots from 1913 to 1914 and was church warden of St Mary’s, the local church. During the Great War, Aldin was placed in charge of the Army Remount Depot at Calcot Park, near Reading, where he befriended Lionel Edwards, Alfred Munnings and George Denholm Armour. (Munnings was employed there as a ‘strapper’ and administered foul-smelling mange-dressing to thousands of horses). Aldin’s son Dudley was killed in the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917, which affected him deeply and had a profound effect of his style of work. After the war, Aldin spent much of his time organising pony and dog shows, particularly on Exmoor, where he followed the Devon and Somerset Staghounds. In the 1920s he added further prints of hunting scenes to create a series of ‘The Hunting Countries’ as well as concentrating on his ever-popular studies of his own and visiting dogs. He also produced a series of prints depicting old inns, manor houses and cathedrals. Aldin’s two favourite canine models Cracker the English Bull Terrier and Micky the Irish Wolfhound were featured in the book Sleeping Partners published in 1929. He depicted them in a variety of comical positions on the sofa in Aldin’s studio as they endeavoured to discover the most comfortable sleeping arrangement. Aldin’s dogs were full of mischief and always getting into trouble and it was perhaps not surprising that he became the first person to organise a mongrel dog show. Cracker outlived his master by two years and seven months. When he died, he received his own obituary in The Times. Aldin also carried out much advertising work and illustrated posters for brands such as Cadbury’s, Colman’s Mustard and Bovril. Aldin lived abroad in the 1930s, due to arthritis, but continued to paint and etch, producing some of his best work. He died in London of a heart attack in January 1935. Between 1934 and 1985, Royal Doulton produced the ‘Dogs of Character’ series of fine bone china figurines based on Aldin illustrations. Royal Doulton also produced the ‘Aldin’s Dogs’ series of decorative plates and small trays for two decades, beginning in the mid 1920s. In the 1930s, the tile manufacturers Carter and Company of Poole produced a series of decorative tiles featuring Aldin’s dogs. His art has become increasingly popular with time and he is appreciated today for his talent in sketching and painting dogs. In a funny pose, the tilt of a head or a cocked ear, Aldin captured the individual character of the many dogs and breeds he worked with. His art demonstrates the camaraderie he felt with his canine friends and models, although his work is never overly cute or sweet. His dog images convey a timeless sense of joy that existed between the artist and his beloved models and is now passed on to the modern-day collector. The plates for Aldin’s prints were destroyed in the Blitz. In 2009 a pair of prints Dutch Boys and Dutch Girls (above) was offered for sale by a dealer for £1,000.